Ficlets: Torchwood (+ Merlin, Doctor Who, Skins)
Here's a re-post of the results of my mathomy fic-writing on Monday. All Torchwood-related, some crossoveriness. Clearly I don't know how to write ficlets as one of these is nearly 2,000 bloody words long. Obv not beta read, just hammered out on the spot, so please excuse any errors.
ETA: the only spoilers are vague ones for Doctor Who season 3, otherwise you don't really have to know much about anything except Torchwood.
It was fabulous fun writing them all, though! Enjoy.
Prompt: Jack Harkness finds Excalibur! (derryderrydown) - 631 words
Read on hope.oscillating.net
Prompt: owen/donna, office au (irradiatedsoup) - 1,920 words
The CEO's got a new temp in, a ginger bird, built like a fucking amazon only with two tits, which, he might add, both appear to be in excellent working order. When he looks back up at her face again she's glaring at him, and if looks could kill then Owen would be a pile of mincemeat right now. He glares back defiantly; what the bloody hell did she expect, with her neckline plunging like a bungee jumper?
He keeps his head down for the rest of the meeting, though, doodling a stick figure on his otherwise-empty notepad, giving it huge breasts that translate through his artistic skill as more like binocular lenses. He circles them idly with his pen for a moment before guiltily cladding the figure in a somewhat demure dress; Fiona from accounts is sitting next to him after all, and she's nice enough.
Owen's not exactly worried, certainly not by Ginger staring daggers in his direction whenever he so much as looks around the table in boredom again. When the meeting's over he doesn't linger, though, after all it's taken half the bloody day and he's got work to do.
Back in his cubicle, he opens up his working spreadsheet and flips open the manila folder alongside his keyboard again. For a few minutes he drums his fingers lightly against the surface of the keys, not enough pressure to depress them as the cells blur into a tablecloth pattern before his eyes. He then spends an hour constructing a working propeller out of a ball of elastic bands, two blunt pencils and a staple remover.
By then it's almost half-four. He spins side to side in his chair until his computer clock ticks over to four-thirty-four, then clicks onto another spreadsheet and hits print.
Hard copy file in his hand, he makes his leisurely way past short row of cubicles, keeping his head forward to maintain the air of purposeful confidence before stepping into the boss's antechamber.
"Hallo love, just got this report for Mister..." It's the ginger bird. Sitting at the CEO's PA's desk, looking up at him with mixed parts relish and scorn. "...Smith," Owen finishes pitifully. Shite. He should have known, Smith never managing to keep a PA around for longer than a few months at a time. Bloody temps.
"Sorry, love," Ginger says. "Mister Smith is indisposed at the moment, but if you'd like to wait--" She gestures generously towards the uncomfortable chairs that sit flush against the flimsy wall opposite her desk. "--I'm sure he won't be long."
Owen waves his papers a little, eyes shifting. "I could always just--"
"Oh no," she says, smiling. It doesn't make him feel any more at ease. "It'll be any minute, now." She points imperiously. Owen sits.
He doesn't want to give her the pleasure of looking at his watch, so after he's examined all the off-the-shelf art prints in great detail, determined that her phone station is a newer model than his own, squinted enough to read--and memorise--the serial number of her computer on the back of her monitor, he estimates that approximately five hours have passed.
He finds his gaze shifting from the inertness of the bland decor to the most interesting thing in the room automatically; though there's no way he's going to make the mistake of staring at her tits again. She's not even looking at him, eyes fixed on the computer screen and mouth pulled into a half pout that appears both nonchalant and determined. She types steadily with the occasional violent slam of the enter key, as if she's using a bloody typewriter that requires physical force for a carriage return. The clicking of her manicured nails against the plastic becomes mildly soothing, and as if sensing his relaxation, she abruptly stops, reaches into a desk drawer, and without looking away from the screen withdraws a nail file and begins to rasp away at her middle finger.
The sound sets Owen's teeth on edge. He bears it for a few more minutes, then goes to stand again, joints creaking. "Look, if I could just--"
"Oh, not at all!" she speaks over him immediately. "You just sit tight, I'm sure he'll only be a few more moments." She forces him back into his seat with the sheer intimidation of her smile alone.
The sky gradually dims outside the antechamber's pitifully-sized window, and in the corridor outside the room the long-since extinguished sounds of people packing up and leaving are replaced by the sound of a vacuum. Ginger still doesn't even so much as look at him, though the shape of her mouth is more determined than smug now, and her keystrokes a little slower.
Owen's not sure when this became a battle of wills--all right, well he does know when it did, but that doesn't mean he's willing to give up--but it's time to up the ante. Time to let loose some of that bulletproof Harper charm.
He clears his throat, waiting for her to look over. She doesn't.
He clears his throat again. "So," he says. "You er... You been here long, then?"
She looks at him then, and he wonders if she has any stares in her portfolio that don't threaten physical violence.
"My name's Owen, Owen Harper," he says, rethinking the part in his plan where he strolled up to the desk and leaned over it suggestively. He crosses his legs nervously instead. "I--"
"Look mate," she says, animosity finally out in the open as she snaps out her response. "Do I honestly look like I care?"
He can't help it, his eyes flick down again, taking in that glorious rack. What might be the last glorious rack he ever sees, he realises when he glances up again and discovers that her teeth are actually bared.
He stands, abruptly very willing to forfeit this particular battle if it means getting out of her with his life intact, let alone his bollocks.
"Look," he says, and darts rapidly past her desk to the closed door just behind it, bearing the name plate John Smith, CEO, along with the company name. "I'll just drop this on his desk and be on my way then--" He knocks twice, frantically, then turns the handle and pushes in without waiting for an answer.
Instinctively he goes to shove the door closed again behind him but the wood reverberates alarmingly as Ginger slams her hands against it--"Oh no you don't, sunshine,"--and he finds himself leaning all his weight against it desperately, setting the backs of his shoulders flat against the wood--
The office in front of him is empty. He stumbles forward abruptly as the sight distracts him the task at hand, and Ginger bursts into the room behind him. He wheels on her. "He isn't even here," he accuses, paper crumpling in his automatic fist. "You kept me out there, waiting, for... for hours--"
"Only two hours," she says unapologetically, folding her arms under her breasts, and making them--in the name of all bloody things holy, what the hell does she expect? He throws his hands up and closes his eyes, giving up.
"All right," he says. "You win, all right?" He goes to stride past her and back out the door but instead finds his lapels seized, body swung forcibly around.
"Not so fast, sweetheart--" she says, but he's trying to slap her hands away and then it's on, shoving and tussling across the room as he attempts to either escape or gain the upper hand. The former seems a safer bet than the latter; now that she's standing up for the first time he realises just how much bigger she is than him; she's positively statuesque.
They knock against the desk and there's the sudden sound of glass breaking; they both freeze, then look down. What had been a small aquarium-thing adorning the desk is now on the floor, a sad, single bit of coral lying in a puddle of water and broken glass.
"Donna?" a voice calls from the antechamber beyond. "That you in there?"
"Oh bloody hell!" Ginger--must be Donna--whispers, sounding genuinely panicked. "Bloody fucking hell!"
She manhandles him--there's no other word for it, really-- around, not even bothering to stop and detangle his fingers from her hair, and shoves him into one of the cupboards that makes up a wall of the room. A wardrobe, from the rattle of wire coathangers about Owen's head.
He swears under his breath, taking cues from her stealth and urgency without even thinking, and she crams in after him, shutting out all but the tiniest bit of light as she closes the door hastily behind her.
"Donna?"
It's Mister Smith, he knows it is, would recognise the way he instills a kind of manic enthusiasm into a single word anywhere. Ordinarily Owen quite likes having it focused on him, as wont to praise as his boss is. Why Mister Smith's PA would want to hide from him in the wardrobe for breaking some bloody corporate art is beyond Owen's comprehension.
"Look," he begins. "Why--"
"Shut up," she hisses, nearly silent but a whole lot of air involved, inflating her lungs and pushing out her chest against him.
He obeys, mainly because he's just realised he's crammed into a small dark space with a pair of some of the most fabulous tits he's ever come this close to and, as his eyes adjust, he realises just how much taller she is.
Tall enough that just looking down gives him a brilliant view of her cleavage, the perfect vantage point to just... dive into the glory that's heaving with her panting breaths, a crevasse he could lose... any number of bits of his anatomy to, happily.
Owen swallows dryly, throat clicking. "What..." he says. "Why are we in here, anyway?" he makes himself ask, fighting an internal battle between the demands of his curiosity and the increasingly enthusiastic demands of what's in his pants.
"It's my boss," Donna hisses, turning her head to peer through a crack of the doorway. The change in pose casts a beam of light over the taut tendons of the side of her neck, and the strands of bronze hair clinging to the skin, obviously still damp from their exertions. "I think he's an alien."
Owen blinks, unable to process before she continues-- "Oh shit, shit, buggering shit--" then turns rapidly away from the door again-- "Just play along, will you?" And she grabs his ears and shoves his face into her bosom.
He doesn't really take in what happens after that, only when he surfaces again the only thing keeping him upright are his arms slung around Donna's waist and her fisted hands in his hair. The sting of it makes his eyes water a little. That and the sudden abundance of light.
Mister Smith's standing by the open door. "There you are," he says cheerfully, then, "Oooh. Oh! Sorry--I, Donna--Sorry!" He scratches a hand nervously against the back of his neck and Owen's pretty sure that this isn't quite how this situation is meant to go.
"Did you need to--? I mean, I could--I'm terribly--"
"Quite all right," Donna says, stepping out of the wardrobe again with considerable dignity. Owen's not quite ready to let go yet, his arms circle her waist from behind and he stumbles after her.
Prompt: The Face of Boe. (greenapple) - 1,045 words
Read on hope.oscillating.net
Prompt: Jack and Ianto explore the tunnels and disused railway and discover pixies. (semplice) - 414 words
"I think something just touched my leg," Jack says urgently.
Ianto sighs, silently, inside his head. "Wasn't me, Sir."
"No, seriously... Something just touched my leg!"
Ianto sets down his thermos lid carefully and picks up the torch again, flicking it on and angling the beam until Jack's legs are in its trajectory. His trousers are scuffed with dust, but otherwise 'something'-free.
"You just made that up so I'd turn the torch on again," Ianto accuses, tilting the light up to see Jack's face. Jack scrunches his eyes closed and scowls against the sudden brightness. He looks ridiculous.
"Well I told you we should have brought the wind-up one, that doesn't even need batteries--"
"If someone hadn't decided to use the crank on the wind-up torch for such unconventional purposes, then I would have brought it."
Ianto's torch beam catches Jack's arms folding sullenly before he turns it off again. "I didn't make it up," Jack says.
Whatever, Ianto mouths to the dark, and picks up his tea again. He swallows the first gulp before he registers the gritty texture of it, clinging to the inside of his mouth no matter how much he rolls his tongue around it to to gather enough for spitting. Not that spitting does much good either.
The torch beam hits his face and he covers his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Your mouth," Jack says. "It's all... Shiny."
Ianto ignores him, taking advantage of being able to see and peering into the thermos lid, not exactly reassured by Jack's observation. His tea appears to have been liberally seasoned with "Glitter."
Which it certainly wasn't when he put it in the thermos.
"Hey, shiny isn't bad, I bet we could make some other things shiny, like if you put your mouth--"
Ianto snatches the torch away, effectively shutting off Jack's ramble like they're on a desert island and Ianto just grabbed the conch. He shines the torch around, bouncing light off the curved walls of the tunnel. For a moment he and Jack both hold their breath, and there's nothing but the sound of dank water dripping in an echoey sort of way somewhere in the distance.
Then there's a high-pitched maniacal giggle, the sharp sound of it hitting the brick and carrying it on long after its brief burst.
Ianto and Jack stare at each other; Ianto can see the whites all around Jack's eyes. Eventually the echoes stop.
"I'm guessing that wasn't you."
Prompt: Cassie from Skins wanders into the Hub on a school trip. (karenhealey) - 609 words
Jack always likes to make a dramatic entrance when he's been off swanning around on his own, as if he needs to make up for being out of their company for even the smallest amount of time.
None of them are inclined to indulge this rather obvious urge, so no one even looks up from their work as the invisible lift starts its slow descent from the Plass.
"Oh wow," says a voice that is most certainly not Jack's (unless he's had another unfortunate accident with the transmogrifier that came through the Rift from Delta-405Q9).
Gwen's head jerks up. There's a girl, still standing on the paving stone, slight and blonde and clearly awed.
Not awed enough to stay where she is though; she wobbles off the paving stone and totters forward in ridiculously high--and also, Gwen has to admit, ridiculously pretty--heels.
"Um," Gwen says, wondering if she should get out her firearm; at first glance their invader appears quite harmless, but... appearances can be deceiving, especially when she shouldn't even be able to see the lift, let alone use it.
Owen's taken the decision out of her hands, though; he's approaching the girl with cautious steps, gun held out before him and pointing towards the diminuitive figure. "Stop right there."
The girl finally focuses on something, the gun in Owen's hand and then his face. Her expression doesn't really change; Gwen rethinks her original assessment that the girl was awed, now that she's closer she actually looks more stoned than anything else.
"Oh," the girl says. "Right, a gun. That's..." She teeters a little, then one knee bends a little as the other locks, throwing her body into a thoughtful, childishly coy tilt. "Wow."
"What is she?" Owen asks, eyes flicking over the mish-mash of the girl's brightly coloured garb; it hangs off her like she's just been for a swim in an Oxfam shop.
"She's a teenager, Owen--" Gwen begins in exasperation, taking in the slow, wide blinking of the girl's mildly curious, mildly apathetic stare.
"Human," Tosh reports from behind them, interrupting without reprimand, and Gwen is glad and mildly embarassed at the adaptability of her colleagues, Owen going for a weapon and Tosh a scanner without a second thought. "But there's something on her..."
Tosh steps closer and Owen lowers his weapon a little, still alert but not in danger of accidentally shooting either Tosh or the girl. Tosh waves the portable scanner through the air until it gives a sharp beep in the vicinity of the bracket of chunky bangles around the girl's wrist.
It's easily retrieved, especially when said girl is somewhat distracted by a pterodactyl chirruping above and then a spinny desk chair that is able to command her attention even more. By then, Owen's tucked his gun away, Tosh is busy tapping away at the archive database with the bangle-device safely contained in a case on her desk, and Gwen has managed to ascertain that the girl--Cassie--is on a school trip across the Bristol Channel.
Ianto approaches with a cup of tea and he and Owen appear to communicate silently for a moment; Gwen might have missed it except she's been working with them for long enough now to recognise what it's about.
"Come on, then," Owen says with a sigh, gripping the back of Cassie's chair to stop the spinning then guiding her towards the autopsy bay, taking the tea from Ianto as he passed and handing it over to the girl. "I've got a nice little pill for you to take."
"Pills are nice, aren't they?" Cassie says, completely unfazed. "I like pills. Woo!"
ETA: the only spoilers are vague ones for Doctor Who season 3, otherwise you don't really have to know much about anything except Torchwood.
It was fabulous fun writing them all, though! Enjoy.
Prompt: Jack Harkness finds Excalibur! (derryderrydown) - 631 words
Read on hope.oscillating.net
Prompt: owen/donna, office au (irradiatedsoup) - 1,920 words
The CEO's got a new temp in, a ginger bird, built like a fucking amazon only with two tits, which, he might add, both appear to be in excellent working order. When he looks back up at her face again she's glaring at him, and if looks could kill then Owen would be a pile of mincemeat right now. He glares back defiantly; what the bloody hell did she expect, with her neckline plunging like a bungee jumper?
He keeps his head down for the rest of the meeting, though, doodling a stick figure on his otherwise-empty notepad, giving it huge breasts that translate through his artistic skill as more like binocular lenses. He circles them idly with his pen for a moment before guiltily cladding the figure in a somewhat demure dress; Fiona from accounts is sitting next to him after all, and she's nice enough.
Owen's not exactly worried, certainly not by Ginger staring daggers in his direction whenever he so much as looks around the table in boredom again. When the meeting's over he doesn't linger, though, after all it's taken half the bloody day and he's got work to do.
Back in his cubicle, he opens up his working spreadsheet and flips open the manila folder alongside his keyboard again. For a few minutes he drums his fingers lightly against the surface of the keys, not enough pressure to depress them as the cells blur into a tablecloth pattern before his eyes. He then spends an hour constructing a working propeller out of a ball of elastic bands, two blunt pencils and a staple remover.
By then it's almost half-four. He spins side to side in his chair until his computer clock ticks over to four-thirty-four, then clicks onto another spreadsheet and hits print.
Hard copy file in his hand, he makes his leisurely way past short row of cubicles, keeping his head forward to maintain the air of purposeful confidence before stepping into the boss's antechamber.
"Hallo love, just got this report for Mister..." It's the ginger bird. Sitting at the CEO's PA's desk, looking up at him with mixed parts relish and scorn. "...Smith," Owen finishes pitifully. Shite. He should have known, Smith never managing to keep a PA around for longer than a few months at a time. Bloody temps.
"Sorry, love," Ginger says. "Mister Smith is indisposed at the moment, but if you'd like to wait--" She gestures generously towards the uncomfortable chairs that sit flush against the flimsy wall opposite her desk. "--I'm sure he won't be long."
Owen waves his papers a little, eyes shifting. "I could always just--"
"Oh no," she says, smiling. It doesn't make him feel any more at ease. "It'll be any minute, now." She points imperiously. Owen sits.
He doesn't want to give her the pleasure of looking at his watch, so after he's examined all the off-the-shelf art prints in great detail, determined that her phone station is a newer model than his own, squinted enough to read--and memorise--the serial number of her computer on the back of her monitor, he estimates that approximately five hours have passed.
He finds his gaze shifting from the inertness of the bland decor to the most interesting thing in the room automatically; though there's no way he's going to make the mistake of staring at her tits again. She's not even looking at him, eyes fixed on the computer screen and mouth pulled into a half pout that appears both nonchalant and determined. She types steadily with the occasional violent slam of the enter key, as if she's using a bloody typewriter that requires physical force for a carriage return. The clicking of her manicured nails against the plastic becomes mildly soothing, and as if sensing his relaxation, she abruptly stops, reaches into a desk drawer, and without looking away from the screen withdraws a nail file and begins to rasp away at her middle finger.
The sound sets Owen's teeth on edge. He bears it for a few more minutes, then goes to stand again, joints creaking. "Look, if I could just--"
"Oh, not at all!" she speaks over him immediately. "You just sit tight, I'm sure he'll only be a few more moments." She forces him back into his seat with the sheer intimidation of her smile alone.
The sky gradually dims outside the antechamber's pitifully-sized window, and in the corridor outside the room the long-since extinguished sounds of people packing up and leaving are replaced by the sound of a vacuum. Ginger still doesn't even so much as look at him, though the shape of her mouth is more determined than smug now, and her keystrokes a little slower.
Owen's not sure when this became a battle of wills--all right, well he does know when it did, but that doesn't mean he's willing to give up--but it's time to up the ante. Time to let loose some of that bulletproof Harper charm.
He clears his throat, waiting for her to look over. She doesn't.
He clears his throat again. "So," he says. "You er... You been here long, then?"
She looks at him then, and he wonders if she has any stares in her portfolio that don't threaten physical violence.
"My name's Owen, Owen Harper," he says, rethinking the part in his plan where he strolled up to the desk and leaned over it suggestively. He crosses his legs nervously instead. "I--"
"Look mate," she says, animosity finally out in the open as she snaps out her response. "Do I honestly look like I care?"
He can't help it, his eyes flick down again, taking in that glorious rack. What might be the last glorious rack he ever sees, he realises when he glances up again and discovers that her teeth are actually bared.
He stands, abruptly very willing to forfeit this particular battle if it means getting out of her with his life intact, let alone his bollocks.
"Look," he says, and darts rapidly past her desk to the closed door just behind it, bearing the name plate John Smith, CEO, along with the company name. "I'll just drop this on his desk and be on my way then--" He knocks twice, frantically, then turns the handle and pushes in without waiting for an answer.
Instinctively he goes to shove the door closed again behind him but the wood reverberates alarmingly as Ginger slams her hands against it--"Oh no you don't, sunshine,"--and he finds himself leaning all his weight against it desperately, setting the backs of his shoulders flat against the wood--
The office in front of him is empty. He stumbles forward abruptly as the sight distracts him the task at hand, and Ginger bursts into the room behind him. He wheels on her. "He isn't even here," he accuses, paper crumpling in his automatic fist. "You kept me out there, waiting, for... for hours--"
"Only two hours," she says unapologetically, folding her arms under her breasts, and making them--in the name of all bloody things holy, what the hell does she expect? He throws his hands up and closes his eyes, giving up.
"All right," he says. "You win, all right?" He goes to stride past her and back out the door but instead finds his lapels seized, body swung forcibly around.
"Not so fast, sweetheart--" she says, but he's trying to slap her hands away and then it's on, shoving and tussling across the room as he attempts to either escape or gain the upper hand. The former seems a safer bet than the latter; now that she's standing up for the first time he realises just how much bigger she is than him; she's positively statuesque.
They knock against the desk and there's the sudden sound of glass breaking; they both freeze, then look down. What had been a small aquarium-thing adorning the desk is now on the floor, a sad, single bit of coral lying in a puddle of water and broken glass.
"Donna?" a voice calls from the antechamber beyond. "That you in there?"
"Oh bloody hell!" Ginger--must be Donna--whispers, sounding genuinely panicked. "Bloody fucking hell!"
She manhandles him--there's no other word for it, really-- around, not even bothering to stop and detangle his fingers from her hair, and shoves him into one of the cupboards that makes up a wall of the room. A wardrobe, from the rattle of wire coathangers about Owen's head.
He swears under his breath, taking cues from her stealth and urgency without even thinking, and she crams in after him, shutting out all but the tiniest bit of light as she closes the door hastily behind her.
"Donna?"
It's Mister Smith, he knows it is, would recognise the way he instills a kind of manic enthusiasm into a single word anywhere. Ordinarily Owen quite likes having it focused on him, as wont to praise as his boss is. Why Mister Smith's PA would want to hide from him in the wardrobe for breaking some bloody corporate art is beyond Owen's comprehension.
"Look," he begins. "Why--"
"Shut up," she hisses, nearly silent but a whole lot of air involved, inflating her lungs and pushing out her chest against him.
He obeys, mainly because he's just realised he's crammed into a small dark space with a pair of some of the most fabulous tits he's ever come this close to and, as his eyes adjust, he realises just how much taller she is.
Tall enough that just looking down gives him a brilliant view of her cleavage, the perfect vantage point to just... dive into the glory that's heaving with her panting breaths, a crevasse he could lose... any number of bits of his anatomy to, happily.
Owen swallows dryly, throat clicking. "What..." he says. "Why are we in here, anyway?" he makes himself ask, fighting an internal battle between the demands of his curiosity and the increasingly enthusiastic demands of what's in his pants.
"It's my boss," Donna hisses, turning her head to peer through a crack of the doorway. The change in pose casts a beam of light over the taut tendons of the side of her neck, and the strands of bronze hair clinging to the skin, obviously still damp from their exertions. "I think he's an alien."
Owen blinks, unable to process before she continues-- "Oh shit, shit, buggering shit--" then turns rapidly away from the door again-- "Just play along, will you?" And she grabs his ears and shoves his face into her bosom.
He doesn't really take in what happens after that, only when he surfaces again the only thing keeping him upright are his arms slung around Donna's waist and her fisted hands in his hair. The sting of it makes his eyes water a little. That and the sudden abundance of light.
Mister Smith's standing by the open door. "There you are," he says cheerfully, then, "Oooh. Oh! Sorry--I, Donna--Sorry!" He scratches a hand nervously against the back of his neck and Owen's pretty sure that this isn't quite how this situation is meant to go.
"Did you need to--? I mean, I could--I'm terribly--"
"Quite all right," Donna says, stepping out of the wardrobe again with considerable dignity. Owen's not quite ready to let go yet, his arms circle her waist from behind and he stumbles after her.
Prompt: The Face of Boe. (greenapple) - 1,045 words
Read on hope.oscillating.net
Prompt: Jack and Ianto explore the tunnels and disused railway and discover pixies. (semplice) - 414 words
"I think something just touched my leg," Jack says urgently.
Ianto sighs, silently, inside his head. "Wasn't me, Sir."
"No, seriously... Something just touched my leg!"
Ianto sets down his thermos lid carefully and picks up the torch again, flicking it on and angling the beam until Jack's legs are in its trajectory. His trousers are scuffed with dust, but otherwise 'something'-free.
"You just made that up so I'd turn the torch on again," Ianto accuses, tilting the light up to see Jack's face. Jack scrunches his eyes closed and scowls against the sudden brightness. He looks ridiculous.
"Well I told you we should have brought the wind-up one, that doesn't even need batteries--"
"If someone hadn't decided to use the crank on the wind-up torch for such unconventional purposes, then I would have brought it."
Ianto's torch beam catches Jack's arms folding sullenly before he turns it off again. "I didn't make it up," Jack says.
Whatever, Ianto mouths to the dark, and picks up his tea again. He swallows the first gulp before he registers the gritty texture of it, clinging to the inside of his mouth no matter how much he rolls his tongue around it to to gather enough for spitting. Not that spitting does much good either.
The torch beam hits his face and he covers his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Your mouth," Jack says. "It's all... Shiny."
Ianto ignores him, taking advantage of being able to see and peering into the thermos lid, not exactly reassured by Jack's observation. His tea appears to have been liberally seasoned with "Glitter."
Which it certainly wasn't when he put it in the thermos.
"Hey, shiny isn't bad, I bet we could make some other things shiny, like if you put your mouth--"
Ianto snatches the torch away, effectively shutting off Jack's ramble like they're on a desert island and Ianto just grabbed the conch. He shines the torch around, bouncing light off the curved walls of the tunnel. For a moment he and Jack both hold their breath, and there's nothing but the sound of dank water dripping in an echoey sort of way somewhere in the distance.
Then there's a high-pitched maniacal giggle, the sharp sound of it hitting the brick and carrying it on long after its brief burst.
Ianto and Jack stare at each other; Ianto can see the whites all around Jack's eyes. Eventually the echoes stop.
"I'm guessing that wasn't you."
Prompt: Cassie from Skins wanders into the Hub on a school trip. (karenhealey) - 609 words
Jack always likes to make a dramatic entrance when he's been off swanning around on his own, as if he needs to make up for being out of their company for even the smallest amount of time.
None of them are inclined to indulge this rather obvious urge, so no one even looks up from their work as the invisible lift starts its slow descent from the Plass.
"Oh wow," says a voice that is most certainly not Jack's (unless he's had another unfortunate accident with the transmogrifier that came through the Rift from Delta-405Q9).
Gwen's head jerks up. There's a girl, still standing on the paving stone, slight and blonde and clearly awed.
Not awed enough to stay where she is though; she wobbles off the paving stone and totters forward in ridiculously high--and also, Gwen has to admit, ridiculously pretty--heels.
"Um," Gwen says, wondering if she should get out her firearm; at first glance their invader appears quite harmless, but... appearances can be deceiving, especially when she shouldn't even be able to see the lift, let alone use it.
Owen's taken the decision out of her hands, though; he's approaching the girl with cautious steps, gun held out before him and pointing towards the diminuitive figure. "Stop right there."
The girl finally focuses on something, the gun in Owen's hand and then his face. Her expression doesn't really change; Gwen rethinks her original assessment that the girl was awed, now that she's closer she actually looks more stoned than anything else.
"Oh," the girl says. "Right, a gun. That's..." She teeters a little, then one knee bends a little as the other locks, throwing her body into a thoughtful, childishly coy tilt. "Wow."
"What is she?" Owen asks, eyes flicking over the mish-mash of the girl's brightly coloured garb; it hangs off her like she's just been for a swim in an Oxfam shop.
"She's a teenager, Owen--" Gwen begins in exasperation, taking in the slow, wide blinking of the girl's mildly curious, mildly apathetic stare.
"Human," Tosh reports from behind them, interrupting without reprimand, and Gwen is glad and mildly embarassed at the adaptability of her colleagues, Owen going for a weapon and Tosh a scanner without a second thought. "But there's something on her..."
Tosh steps closer and Owen lowers his weapon a little, still alert but not in danger of accidentally shooting either Tosh or the girl. Tosh waves the portable scanner through the air until it gives a sharp beep in the vicinity of the bracket of chunky bangles around the girl's wrist.
It's easily retrieved, especially when said girl is somewhat distracted by a pterodactyl chirruping above and then a spinny desk chair that is able to command her attention even more. By then, Owen's tucked his gun away, Tosh is busy tapping away at the archive database with the bangle-device safely contained in a case on her desk, and Gwen has managed to ascertain that the girl--Cassie--is on a school trip across the Bristol Channel.
Ianto approaches with a cup of tea and he and Owen appear to communicate silently for a moment; Gwen might have missed it except she's been working with them for long enough now to recognise what it's about.
"Come on, then," Owen says with a sigh, gripping the back of Cassie's chair to stop the spinning then guiding her towards the autopsy bay, taking the tea from Ianto as he passed and handing it over to the girl. "I've got a nice little pill for you to take."
"Pills are nice, aren't they?" Cassie says, completely unfazed. "I like pills. Woo!"